Research News

New book asks how best to prevent child sex abuse

By ILENE FLEISCHMANN

“It seems almost so simple as to be absurd, but we keep looking at these grand schemes and there are some things just staring us in the face that are more effective.”

Charles Patrick Ewing, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor

UB Law School

The statistics are shocking: As many as one-third of boys and
three-quarters of girls in the United States experience some sort
of sexual abuse as children or adolescents. The response has been
determined: Governments have passed strict laws, entered into
international treaties and established large bureaucracies in hopes
of curbing child sexual abuse.

But Charles Patrick Ewing, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor
in the UB Law School, says an honest accounting shows that none of
these efforts has been demonstrably effective against the problem.
“The bottom line,” he says, “is that for most
part the data don’t support much of what’s been done
and it’s very difficult to prevent children from being
sexually exploited or abused.”

What does work? Some common-sense strategies, he says, that can
be as simple as teaching children to stay out of risky situations
and making transparency and safety a priority in organizations that
serve children.

That common-sense advice is at the heart of “Preventing
the Sexual Victimization of Children: Psychological, Legal and
Public Policy Perspectives” (Oxford University Press),
Ewing’s new book that critically examines the ways adults
have tried to protect children from sexual abuse.

The idea for the book, Ewing says, came when he spoke at a
conference at Johns Hopkins University on preventing child sexual
abuse. “I learned a lot about the subject and I heard a lot
of ideas, but not much empirical support for them,” he says.
“I decided to survey all the methods that people have
purported to use to prevent child sexual abuse. I came up with a
rather large list and then I asked, do the data support any of
these?”

Chapters in the book give a historical overview of the problem,
examine the effects of the crime on children, discuss prevention
strategies aimed at parents and children, and at perpetrators, and
review Internet-related child sexual abuse and exploitation, the
abuse of children in institutional settings and the significant
problem of the prostitution of children.

“Over the past couple of decades, society has made
significant gains in preventing child sexual abuse,” Ewing
writes in his conclusion. “However, if these apparent gains
are to be maintained in the years to come, preventive efforts
… will need to be carefully examined using both empirical
evidence and logical reasoning.”

He cites as “probably ineffective or
counterproductive” such strategies as enhanced criminal
penalties, extending statutes of limitation, civil commitment of
child sex offenders and restrictions on offenders’ jobs,
residency and travel.

“Strategies that may be effective” include parent
education, encouraging bystander intervention, background checks
for those who work with children and limiting the sexualization of
children in media and advertising.

Strategies most likely to be effective, Ewing writes, include
risk education and teaching children to protect themselves,
minimizing private space in schools and juvenile detention
facilities, using technology to stop the production and
distribution of child pornography, and severely punishing the
producers and distributors of such material.

“It seems almost so simple as to be absurd,” Ewing
says, “but we keep looking at these grand schemes and there
are some things just staring us in the face that are more
effective.”

Such as:

Rethinking the architecture of institutions that serve
children, putting in more windows and fewer doors, with more open
space.

Parents not allowing their children to be alone with teachers
or other adults.

Teaching children to protect themselves. “Even younger
kids can be taught what’s wrong and right, and to tell
someone if something happens to them,” Ewing says.
“With older kids you can teach them to get away and to avoid
situations where they might be subject to sexual abuse.”

“Desexualizing” the way children’s images are
used in media. “Everywhere you look,” Ewing says,
“people are trying to sell you something and using sexualized
images, and a lot of the images are about kids.”

Changing the culture of institutions that serve children. Ewing
credits recent changes in the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts
for reducing the risks of predatory sexual behavior.

Treating children who are arrested for prostitution —
almost always runaways — as victims and not criminals, and
diverting them into programs that provide housing, education,
counseling and therapy.

Making Internet service providers responsible for screening out
child pornography being traded on their bandwidth. “Clearly,
a huge way in which kids are sexually abused is in the making and
distribution of child pornography,” Ewing says. “As it
is now, the guy who gets caught downloading or possessing child
porn gets a draconian prison sentence, but what about the people
who create the stuff?”

READER COMMENT

I hope this book is widely read and reviewed, and recommendations implemented by all those who work with children. I wonder if Professor Ewing has reached out to PCANY (Prevent Child Abuse New York. The annual conference is April 28-30 in Albany. Thank you for your work.

Dalene Aylward

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